The present invention relates to the field of fire protection and more particularly to robotic means of providing such protection via unmanned air vehicles. While this invention is primarily intended for, and this specification only addresses, wildlands fire protection, it will be obvious that this invention can be utilized to protect areas other than just wildlands, e.g. oil lands, from the damaging effects of fires.
There are over 21 billion acres of forest in the world, over 5 billion in North America and over 1 billion in the United States. These forests provide watershed, habitat for animals, residential and recreation sites for humans, and a resource for timber. Every year much of these forests is destroyed by forest fires. The following table summarizes the cost of timber lost annually.
What this table does not reflect are the incidental and consequential losses from wildland fires. Costs of fire fighting, loss of adjacent assets, loss of watershed, later mud slides, loss of livelihood and disruption of lives and trade are hard to calculate in every case. But, for example, as a direct result of a recent forest fire in Kuala Lumpur, the US Embassy had to be shut down because of air pollution. In another recent fire around Sydney, Australia, businesses were forced to close because of air pollution. Such fires typically result in losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The last wildland fire starting in Malibu, Calif. and burning to Topanga Canyon was reported to have destroyed 15,000 acres of high value assets with total property losses of $1-2 billion.
Wildland fires start small. Many are started by lightening. Then they spread rapidly, especially in dry locations and if there is a high wind. In the time from detection until fire fighters typically reach the scene an initially 20 foot diameter fire can reach a diameter of 3 miles.
The traditional approach to fighting fires has been truck based fire fighting. In this approach many men and fire trucks are dispatched to try to extinguish the fire with water, chemical fire suppression agents and by eliminating the fuel via back fires. They typically also need to cut fire breaks so that they reach and extinguish small pockets of fire sequentially. The advantages of traditional truck based fire fighting are: reasonable cost, minimum training and ease of maintenance. The disadvantages are: it is inherently slow (it takes time to assemble the men and equipment and time for them to reach the fire), it does not save the wildland and other assets in the vicinity (at best it controls the fire) and a system of fire roads must be created and maintained.
The other more recent approach to fighting wildland fires is by manned aircraft, both fixed wing and rotary wing craft (i.e. helicopters). The big advantage of this approach is access to remote areas. The standard method of implementing this approach is with on call manpower and aircraft. This method has low effectiveness because of the time needed to assemble before resources can be applied. The other method of implementing this approach is with continuously available manpower and aircraft. This latter approach does make the method more effective, but the cost of having men and machines constantly available is usually prohibitive. In any case the cost for maintenance and support of aircraft, especially helicopters, is very high.
What is needed is a fire fighting system that is constantly vigilant, constantly available, able to apply fire suppression almost immediately after a fire is detected, easy to maintain and low in cost. Development of a such a wildland fire fighting system represents a great improvement in the field of fire fighting and satisfies a long felt need of the entire world.
The system described below is an invention intended to satisfy the need identified above. This invention is a fire fighting system that is constantly vigilant, constantly available, able to apply fire suppression almost immediately after a fire is detected, easy to maintain and low in cost. The present invention comprises a set of unmanned aircraft, fire detection subsystems, which comprise the robotic survey vehicles; a set of launch-on-need, unmanned aircraft, fire suppression subsystems, which comprise the robotic extinguisher vehicles; and a manned, central, robotic vehicle flight control and monitoring station. Augmentation of the detection capabilities of the robotic survey vehicles by tethered balloons and human observers in fixed locations, as has been done in the past by the US Forest Service, is not necessary for this system. When deployed, the robotic survey vehicles continuously patrol the wildland so that fires can be detected when they first start. The robotic extinguisher vehicles, which contain fire suppressant or extinguisher are deployed on rocket assist take-off launchers, or other automated mobile launchers, at critical locations throughout the wildland. Fire suppressant can be in the form of powder, liquid or packages designed to open and dispense fire suppressant to cover the entire fire surface upon impact.
The pilot at the central monitoring station controls the flight path of the survey vehicles and continuously receives video and fire scan information from them. Upon detection of a fire signal, the signal is verified and its position is determined via use of a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) receiver signal and a monitor map overlay. The fire location is cleared for extinguisher drop after permission is sought and obtained from the applicable security agency to launch an extinguisher vehicle. When permission is granted, the pilot at the central monitoring station provides the fire co-ordinates to the nearest, available extinguisher vehicle and initiates its launch. This vehicle flies to the location, performing final homing with its onboard infrared (IR) sensor and video camera with assistance from the GPS data and video display with map overlay used by the central flight control station, drops its fire suppressant on the target fire, assesses drop results and heads to a pre-established landing strip at the wildland perimeter. The landing strip may be located at the central control station. At the landing strip, the extinguisher vehicle is checked out, re-loaded with another extinguisher payload and, if applicable, another launch rocket and again deployed in the wildland.
The advantages of this invention are:
it provides rapid response to a fire,
it avoids delays associated with rounding up men and equipment,
it has a low maintenance cost,
all the equipment is recoverable and reusable,
its deployment population and distance between extinguisher delivery vehicles is similar to that of fire truck deployment in a large city surrounded by wildlands, and
the only continuous manpower needed is the control and monitoring pilot and refurbishing crew.
Use of this invention costs less than that of using manned approaches to fighting xe2x80x9cjust startedxe2x80x9d wildland fires. Primarily, this invention reduces wildland fire related losses of area assets from devastating levels to negligible levels by putting fires out early. Use of this invention reduces ancillary damage, such as that caused by smoke, pollution, destruction of structures and wildlife, and destruction of timber itself. To put things in perspective, the loss resulting from the Malibu/Topanga fire described above is more than one thousand times the current estimated price and life cycle cost of the system described herein.
An appreciation of the other aims and objectives of the present invention and an understanding of it may be achieved by referring to the accompanying drawings and description of a preferred embodiment.